


A Star or Two Besides

by FictionPenned, MilesHibernus



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Pairs, The holy water fight, a whole lot of internal monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26437420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: A long ocean voyage leaves a lot of time for thinking.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 11
Collections: GO-Events POV Pairs Works





	A Star or Two Besides

Aziraphale likes boat travel in _theory_ , much the way that children dream of being lion trainers in _theory_. However, when confronted with the reality of tossing seas and close quarters and gnashing teeth — only one item of which overlaps between the two — such grand ideas quickly grow less and less appealing. Nonetheless, when presented with the opportunity to circumnavigate the globe alongside a group of intrepid human tourists on the cusp of innovation, he can’t possibly say no. He is, at heart, naturally curious about these types of things, and so he packs a bag, locks up his bookshop, and pops over to New York to buy a ticket and claim a place on the _RMS Laconia._

He springs for the more expensive passage — a decision that the ticket agent silently questions with a dismissive flick of the gaze over the angel’s worn clothing — and allows himself to begin to settle into the excitement of the beginning of the journey. 

It’s probably a good thing that he’s getting away for a while, he decides. Life has been rather unpleasant in recent decades, due mostly in part to one _particular_ individual who shall neither be named nor spoken about. Everyone is always speaking about how sea air is good for the health, and though physical health is an abstract concept for a being like him, his heart could use a bit of a pick me up. Filling it with new faces and new experiences ought to force out the rotted parts and reignite his previous vigor for life, even if the toll for such things are rolling storms and a smidge of seasickness. 

The gap between getting his ticket and stepping foot on the dock is not a long one. He spends a couple days meandering about the city, poking his nose into every quaint little bookshop he stumbles across and picking up not one but five texts with which to entertain himself on the passage. It always comes as a surprise when booksellers actually sell their books — he rarely manages to part with his own — but he supposes that if everyone was as stubbornly attached to their collections as he is, then he would never be able to accumulate new things. Unless, of course, he went straight to the source and managed to nab the original manuscript, a practice that mostly involves a bit of light persuasion but once required a proper miracle. Only luck kept him from getting caught for that particular misuse of power, but in his defense, it was a very rare and very important book, and the published version simply would not do. 

It is quite a large boat, as one would hope would befit a journey this long, and Aziraphale catches himself peering around corners as a valet leads him to his cabin, taking in the view. Indeed, it feels more like a building than a ship, and it offers him hope that perhaps this boat might be greater than the forces of nature that will act upon it, and the journey might not be tinged with any unpleasantness _whatsoever_ , and to top it off, there are multiple lounges and dining rooms, all of which look intensely promising for a being who enjoys both settling down to read and taking in a good meal far more than most other things in the universe. Hope buzzes throughout his being. This was a good idea, getting away for a while. 

It is only after Aziraphale deposits his bags upon his assigned bed in his assigned cabin and looks over at a mirror framed with gilded snakes that he feels himself crashing back down into the bitterness that has so thoroughly defined the recent past. There’s a demon out there somewhere who would have probably enjoyed this sort of thing, who he would have liked to share this experience with, if they weren’t an _abhorrently reckless_ individual who no longer deserves Aziraphale’s regard. 

With a huff, he tosses a throw blanket over the dreadful thing and resigns himself to forgetting about it. 

Aziraphale will not allow someone who isn’t even here to ruin his chance at a good time.

* * *

Crowley did not have any desire at all to take a long sea voyage. He hated boats; they were unstable and dangerous and smelly and damp and _cold_. Still less did he want to do it in steerage, which took all the previous adjectives and added ‘crowded’, ‘loud’, and ‘boring’.

Unfortunately, Beelzebub didn’t give a bless what he hated or desired—though in fact it was entirely possible that they knew he didn’t like boats and that was _why_ they’d told him he had to take one—and orders were orders.

He could at least get to the Big Apple1 in style, and once there he spent an obscenely comfortable night in the Ritz-Carlton. But in the morning he braced himself, swapped his clothes out, and bought a third-class ticket on the _RMS Laconia_.

He couldn’t even amuse himself by being late and making a fuss about it, not with a steerage ticket. They would happily sail without him, and he didn’t fancy having to dodge a kicking if he tried to complain.

Just to top it off, as he lounged at the edge of the mob of third-class passengers, he caught a glimpse of cream and beige moving up the gangplank into first-class territory. That was just what he needed, a reminder of the most self-righteous, arrogant, _condescending_ —

Well, he didn’t need the reminder. Crowley took a last drag of his evil-smelling2 cigarillo, dropped it, and left it to burn out on the pavement.

* * *

Aziraphale establishes a routine fairly quickly. He has always liked routines. Routines provide comforting bulwarks against chaos and uncertainty, both of which are _hardly_ Heaven’s domain. Of course, the activities around which he constructs his routine aren’t particularly Heavenly either, but Aziraphale chose to turn a blind eye to those small deviations a long time ago. Evil does not take its roots in gourmet breakfasts and medium-rare steaks, and Aziraphale has always chosen his books with care. 

Besides, it’s not as though he’s fallen into human habits as completely and thoroughly as the demon that he is most definitely _not_ thinking about. By comparison, Aziraphale remains almost entirely untouched by the fast-moving, innovative lives of the humans that unfold around him. 

As far as Aziraphale sees it, there is no harm in allowing his day to revolve around taking meals in the dining room, settling down in a comfortable armchair in order to immerse himself in his book of choice, and devoting a bit of time in the evening with frivolous games and a touch of dancing. He avoids all of the games that require gambling, however, he participates in almost _all_ of the dancing. Of course, he only knows the one dance — the gavotte, which is far and away his favorite — but that doesn’t stop him from enthusiastically convincing his fellow travelers that it can be done to almost every possible song. 

There is only one occasion on which it fails him. 

On a night when the seas are quiet and his mind is delightfully hazy thanks to an overabundance of wine, he catches a glimpse of dark red hair across the room, gilded by the bright light of the chandelier. The angel misses a step, the toe of his shoe scuffing against the polished floor. 

“Whoa there, too much to drink?” a man at his right says as he catches Aziraphale’s elbow in order to keep him from falling. 

It takes Aziraphale an embarrassingly long time to find both his tongue and his mastery of language. 

“Something like that, I suppose,” the angel waffles as he recovers his balance. He glances at his savior for a passing moment before turning his eyes back towards the corner in which he glimpsed a ghost.

Whatever he had seen — _whoever_ he had seen — they’re gone now. 

_It was probably nothing_ , he reassures himself. Plenty of people have red hair, and it is highly unlikely that _any_ demon would happen to be aboard this very boat, nonetheless the one with which he is currently feuding. 

He’s drunk and sentimental and nothing more. 

A small, self-indulgent miracle clears his head.

It should make him feel better, but it doesn’t. 

The uncomfortable sense of being haunted lingers throughout his being, and after a few more minutes of attempted merriment, he chooses to retire to his cabin in a futile attempt to lose himself in the words of the young Virginia Woolf.

* * *

Of course, not thinking about it wasn’t as simple as all that.

Crowley was fine, when he had something to do, but the problem with sea voyages as a passenger was that one rarely did. There was only so much foment he was willing to spread in steerage; he couldn’t leave town if too many people took a dislike, and “Let’s you and him fight”, as the Americans said, had distinct limits in a small group. Therefore, Crowley spent a lot of time in his berth, brooding.

He had managed to snag a good spot, at least; he tucked his ‘iron portable berth’3 into a corner next to a bulkhead that gave him a modicum of privacy, and he wasn’t right next to anything too loud. He slept a fair bit, but there were too many humans about for him to just lie down, close his eyes, and wake up when the trip was over.

He knew that they were stopping at various places along the way; other third-class passengers departed and new ones arrived. Crowley noted it only in passing.

It wasn’t as if he and the angel had never fought before. But this one rankled, in a way none of the other arguments had; though Aziraphale could be naive, unperceptive, and infuriatingly unwilling to confront the many ways in which his Heavenly superiors took advantage of him, he had never before been so willfully obtuse. Crowley remained entirely uncertain why Aziraphale had jumped so immediately to the idea of a blessed _suicide pill_. Wasn’t it obvious that they needed to be able to protect themselves against their head offices? What other options were there, if Hell got in a strop? And yes, of course it’d be dangerous to Crowley too, but he knew how to be careful, and—

And nothing, because Aziraphale was an arrogant wanker, willing to reduce six _thousand_ years of friendship4 to ‘fraternising’, and Crowley didn’t need that, or him.

* * *

The stops along the way are a mixed bag. 

Some of them are absolutely lovely — full of delightful people and fantastically good food. Others are marred by storms and other ill-fated weather. Aziraphale spends one afternoon on land saving a number of people from sunburn and heat stroke in a flurry of activity that will most likely earn him a strongly worded memo from the higher ups, but he can’t just stand idly by and watch people melt away. These are his friends, after all. 

Or, at least, he thinks they’re his friends. 

They do some of the things that human friends do with each other. They laugh and drink and play games and talk about their lives and swap book recommendations, however, those paltry shared experiences hardly seem to hold a candle to the experience of having a _best_ friend. 

For all the stories and laughs that they share, he never feels truly understood by the humans around him. That was true in the age of antiquity and it continues to be true now. As much as he hates to admit it, there’s only ever been one friend that matters, and they had parted ways long ago, fighting over poorly considered favors and suicide pills. 

He catches himself tugging the blanket off of the mirror in his cabin, gazing at the tiny, intricately-wrought snakes and wondering what Crowley might be doing at this very moment, and he despises himself for that very sentimentality. 

Crowley is a _demon_. He will _always_ be a demon. 

Best not to think of him. 

Best to just put on a straight face and finally move on. 

It’s a resolution that’s terribly easy to make, but enormously difficult to actually act upon. 

He tries to throw the blanket back over the mirror from halfway across the room, but being a creature with remarkably bad aim, he _misses_. The fabric only manages to cover the offensive thing partway, leaving a singular snakehead with a glinting eye surveying the room from its perch on the upper left corner of the frame. 

Aziraphale studies the situation with the same intensity with which a diviner might study the tea leaves gathered at the bottom of one’s cup, wondering whether this is some sort of omen or merely a coincidence. 

In the end, he fails to take a side and leaves the entire affair the way it is — lopsided blanket, exposed corner, and all. 

* * *

When he got tired of his berth, Crowley would wander. Steerage passengers were not supposed to leave their designated areas, lest they offend the eyes of the worthy, but that was nothing to him.

The contrast between belowdecks and the first class passenger area was stunning; bare girders and rough wooden floors versus deep carpets, elaborate carvings, and gilt enough to give Versailles a run for its money. Crowley rather enjoyed defiling the sparkling richness with his lower-class self. He wandered corridors, poked his head into unsecured5 staterooms, and lurked outside the lounges, listening to the music and voices. Belowdecks there wasn’t much in the way of rejoicing, which Crowley supposed should have pleased him as evidence of bad feeling.

The thing was—

 _No_ , it didn’t matter. Obviously Aziraphale didn’t care to apologize; it had been fifty blessed years and it wasn’t as if Crowley were hard to track down. He didn’t stay in London all the time, of course, as witness his current position, but a message could have been left at any time in the past _half century_ and he would have gotten it eventually. And Crowley would kiss Hastur’s arse before he apologized first. Once the angel had grovelled a little, he’d be perfectly happy to admit that perhaps his reactions hadn’t been as moderate as they might, but Aziraphale was the one who’d started it, so Aziraphale could apologize first, and that was all Crowley had to say on the subject.

Because the thing _was_ that Crowley understood. He really did. Aziraphale was so sodding scared, all the time, and most of all when the two of them were together. Crowley tried not to push; he just occasionally pointed out the blatantly obvious fact that neither of their respective sets of higher-ups6 _paid any blessed attention to them_. As long as they delivered results they were left alone. Crowley was good at delivering results, not all of which he’d actually had anything to do with, and Aziraphale had Heaven convinced that he was the only one who could thwart The Wily Serpent, and as long as that state of affairs held everything was _fine._

It wasn’t even that Crowley never had any worries of his own. There was a reason he’d asked for holy water in the first place! And then Aziraphale had leapt to entirely the wrong conclusion, and gotten up on his Heavenly high horse7 and now they hadn’t spoken in fifty years and Crowley was tired of it. He’d been apart from Aziraphale for longer than that, of course, but that had been back in the old days, when they still circled each other cautiously and hadn’t yet worked out just how little supervision they had.

It wasn’t very demonic to miss someone, especially an angel, but Crowley had known since approximately his second performance review that he was absolutely pants at being a demon.8 At least, the kind of demon Hell wanted, the kind that enjoyed cruelty and pain and loved to spend years prying away at one single soul. All Crowley wanted to do was annoy people, and if that made them do the wrong thing, that wasn’t his fault, was it?

But yes. Crowley missed the angel. Missed everything about him, his infuriating fussiness and his random, inconvenient attacks of scruples and his reluctance to give up his books9 and the small happy noises he made when he ate something he liked and the smile, oh, that _smile_.

At that point Crowley decided he’d better go back to his berth.

* * *

A lovely fellow lends Aziraphale a book as they begin to trundle across the Pacific. It’s a cozy little set of mystery stories, a genre that Aziraphale has always secretly enjoyed. According to the letter of the law, he’s not supposed to like puzzles — puzzles are built upon _deception_ , after all — but despite that, he still finds himself flipping through their pages on occasion, absorbing the story and trying to solve the mystery alongside whatever detective is at the helm. 

As delightful as he finds these interactive texts, however, Aziraphale is not particularly gifted at stringing clues together and solving the mystery before the story lays the solution out for the reader. He always gets distracted by the red herrings — latches onto a conclusion from the outset and then fails to reevaluate it later. 

When he turns the final page of a short story and finds yet _another_ theory of his proven wrong, his mind wanders back to the demon that shall neither be named nor thought about. 

Technically, Crowley hadn’t explicitly stated that he planned to use the Holy Water as a suicide pill, but that is the natural conclusion that _anyone_ would have jumped to. In Aziraphale’s view, there’s very little else it _could_ be used for. He hadn’t leapt to unwarranted conclusions or started a fight unnecessarily. As far as he sees it, he was merely rightfully concerned about the well-being of a former friend. 

This isn’t the case of a mystery wrongly solved; there is only one thing that could have possibly happened. 

_Isn’t there?_

With a sniff and a quick shake of his head, Aziraphale puts Crowley out of his mind and turns the page, ready to once again be led astray by a string of false clues. 

* * *

Crowley could’ve turned off his sexual impulses, in much the same way that he could have turned off pretty much any biological function; he did not _have to_ eat, drink, sleep, breathe, use the loo, be affected by alcohol, anything. He’d tried it a few times since it would have made a lot of things about being near Aziraphale more bearable.

Except that, as it turned out, it didn’t.

Wanking, even angry wanking, at least gave him a way to release the pressure. More than that, he could pretend that unfulfilled lust was _all_ there was. It was properly demonic, wasn’t it, lusting after one’s enemy and acting on that lust without said enemy’s knowledge?

He clung to that thought, and resolutely ignored the fantasies that crowded in whenever he thought of Aziraphale and sex at the same time. Lust for one’s enemy was demonic; Crowley’s fantasies were decidedly not, featuring as they normally did soft words and soft touches and sweet sighs, and often a _different_ four-letter word beginning with L that Crowley never, ever thought about at any other time.

It wasn’t safe, to think that other word. Thinking about that other word led to dangerous things—swooping in to save the angel from his own silly impulses, yes, but discorporation, inconvenient as it might be, wasn’t _dangerous_.

What was dangerous was thinking about being able to walk up behind Aziraphale and wrap arms around his waist, and in return get a chuckle and a murmur of, _Just a moment while I lock up_. What was dangerous was imagining what he might look like overwhelmed with pleasure, pleasure that Crowley had given him. What was dangerous was fingers combing through hair and someone else’s quiet breathing while dropping off to sleep and long evenings talking about everything and nothing.

What was dangerous was the tiny, stubborn belief that Crowley might ever get to have any of those dangerous things.

He knew it would never happen, had known even before that disastrous meeting in the park. No matter what happened, they _were_ on opposite sides. Someday Armageddon would come, and Heaven and Hell would, as Crowley had once said, take to the streets with swords in hand.10 Heaven would never take Crowley back,11 and the only reason he wouldn’t wish Falling on his worst enemies was because all of them had already Fallen, so one way or another he and Aziraphale were going to be at either end of the pitch for the Last Battle. The best Crowley could hope for was that he wouldn’t have to face Aziraphale _directly_ , and that Heaven would win.

He’d sat down once and thought it over, and there were three possible outcomes:

One: Hell would win, and Crowley would survive. Not acceptable; he did not particularly _want_ to live in Hell for all eternity. Hell had no wine, no good music, no silk sheets, and no angels. So that could be scratched off.

Two: Hell would win, and Crowley would die. Marginally better, in that he wouldn’t have to endure eternity in a universe that thought _DO NOT LICK THE WALLS_ was something people should have to be _told_. But it came with significant downsides; Crowley had heard some of the ideas for what should happen to angelic prisoners after Hell’s quote inevitable victory unquote, and he did not like them.

Three: Heaven would win. Crowley would die,12 but Aziraphale would survive.13 Aziraphale would probably be a little wistful for the first few hundred years,14 but he’d get over it.

So. That was what had to happen, and no amount of whinging on Crowley’s part would get him anything better. It was going to be more difficult with Aziraphale refusing to talk to him, but he was nothing if not inventive. And he’d had a lot of practice making sure the angel didn’t end up on the wrong end of something, at this point.

But he—

Well, he didn’t like to think that he’d be spending however many more years the world had without speaking to Aziraphale again. It didn’t seem fair, that after all this time their friendship should have been broken by something so trivial. And though Crowley, of all beings in the universe, was aware down to the marrow of his bones that nothing about existence was _fair_ , it still rankled that he had managed to cock up one of the very few things that were worth enduring Hell for. One of the things that had kept him from ever finding a church or a temple or a sacred grove and jumping into the water.

If it came down to it, if it looked sure that Hell really would win...well, it couldn’t be allowed to come to that. Because Crowley knew perfectly well that he couldn’t do what would need to be done, not even to save Aziraphale from Hell’s victory.

Crowley could control hellfire, just as much as any other demon. He could get himself into a position to use it effectively, if for no other reason than that Aziraphale would hesitate to strike him.15 But he’d never be able to go through with it. He’d made an effort to be honest with himself, purely for planning purposes, and it had been obvious.

Somehow, Heaven had to win, and somehow Crowley had to ensure it without Aziraphale catching on to what he was doing, because as soon as he did he’d try to get in the way. He’d think that Crowley was wiling away, and after all, if Aziraphale saw a wile, he had to thwart it. It was what a good angel would do, and Aziraphale was unable to admit that he was no better at being a Good Angel than Crowley was at being the Perfect Demon.

* * *

The seas are quiet and the sky is riddled with countless stars. 

They dance and twinkle, spinning at incredible speed in the vastness of space. Aziraphale always likes looking at the night sky. Not because Crowley played no small part in its making, but simply because there is a certain degree of calm to be found in the way that the tiny pinpricks of light cut through the interminable darkness. Light travels through almost infinite space — stretching through an airless void for centuries until it reaches the human eye and becomes a symbol to be prayed to and wished upon and chronicled in a hundred myths and legends. 

People have always looked up towards the stars and strung them together into stories — given them names and tales and purposes beyond those for which they were originally made. If he looks out far enough towards the horizon, he can see Hercules brandishing his weapons, ready to be the sort of hero that heaven always lauds and that Aziraphale will never be. Nearby sits an arc that has been a crown and an eagle’s nest and a bear’s den, and cornered between the two is a long, coiled line that casts an all-too-human shiver through the angel. 

To the Greeks, this constellation was the head of a snake. The snake’s tail wanders elsewhere, but the head itself is said to be grasped by a healer who used it to resurrect the human dead. 

How often snakes are tied with temptation through the ages — the temptation to eat the fruit, the temptation to raise the dead, the temptation to hold onto a friendship that best ought to be forgotten and never should have happened in the first place. 

Motion flickers in Aziraphale’s periphery. A lanky figure with hands in his pockets and a somewhat nonchalant air makes his way across the deck, idly sweeping his eyes across the sky. Hope and fear and desperation swell in Aziraphale’s chest, threatening to overwhelm him entirely, but it is only a second before the figure steps into a pool of moonlight and their identity is illuminated. 

It is simply a stranger. 

Not an old friend. 

Aziraphale collects himself with a breath and a shifting of feet and greets the stranger with a curt nod before retreating belowdecks and seeking out the relative sanctuary of his room. 

From beneath the haphazardly thrown blanket, the gilded serpent on the edge of the mirror continues to stare him down. Aziraphale eyes it in return — gaze filled with irritation and betrayal and another, much more slippery emotion that is difficult to identify — but still, he moves neither to cover it nor cast it away. 

The serpent remains almost _sinfully_ exposed — ever his silent, watchful guardian — and for a moment, Aziraphale dares to wonder what might have happened if Crowley had simply bitten his forked tongue and held back the request that so divided them. Things would have been so much simpler. Perhaps they would have been able to take this journey together. Perhaps they would be drinking and laughing and discussing the many merits of human creation. Perhaps things would still be as they once were. 

But alas, it is too much to hope for. 

Rewriting the past is beyond even the reach of miracles.

* * *

One night, as the end of the interminable voyage finally crawled close, Crowley took a turn around the promenade. By the time they’d started the long slow trip across the Pacific, wandering posh territory in his workman’s togs had begun to pall as a source of entertainment, but Crowley still liked the first class promenade for stargazing. Being above more of the ship’s lights than the section of deck allotted to steerage, it offered a better view. He sometimes had company, couples taking romantic strolls or the occasional solitary shape he made sure to steer well clear of. He was in no mood for socialising, much less the kind of maudlin musings he was likely to get from a human encountered alone at night, looking at the stars. So many celestial taskmasters. So many upper-office snobs with their nose in earth’s work.

There wasn’t anything to be done about Aziraphale. Aziraphale was Aziraphale, and he couldn’t be expected to be anything else, and he’d decided to throw away Crowley—Crowley’s _friendship_ —over a misunderstanding. Right, well then, Crowley just had to keep going on alone; he wasn’t going to apologise first, and the angel wasn’t going to apologise at all, so that was that. Crowley had survived without Aziraphale before, and he could do it again. He didn’t have to enjoy it, just endure it. He couldn’t covertly assist Heaven’s victory if he put a foot wrong and Hell killed or recalled him before the Big One got underway.

The viewing on the promenade was poor, obscured by high wispy clouds, and the deck had another occupant he had to keep dodging. Fortunately the person was relatively easy to spot, wearing as they did some light colour, but they were restless and unpredictable and Crowley just didn’t have the will to keep playing a one-sided game of tag so he went back to his berth and put himself to bed.

Deep in the night he woke from a confused and murky dream to the sound of Aziraphale’s voice. Heavy with sleep as he was, it took Crowley nearly a minute to come to his senses; the angel was not miraculously in the third class sleeping compartment, whisked there from the street or his shop or a table at some fine establishment by Crowley’s throttled desire. Wherever he was, he no doubt counted himself better off without a demon dogging his footsteps.

Crowley sighed, rearranged his entirely inadequate blanket, and closed his eyes again. He could not remember what the angel’s voice had said, only its tone, sad but resolute. Who knew what words Crowley’s sleeping mind might have chosen to put into Aziraphale’s mouth? Too many possibilities presented themselves and he couldn’t decide which was the most likely.16 Certainly it _could_ have been _I’m sorry_. _I miss you_ felt like a strong contender as well. But there were plenty of others, _We can’t meet again_ or _How could you ask me that?_ or _My dear fellow, I couldn’t possibly, not with—well. I couldn’t possibly._

It could even have been the other word, the dangerous one. Crowley would never hear it from Aziraphale while awake, but there was no reason he couldn’t indulge himself while asleep.

* * *

“Has something got you down, sir?” a crew member asks over breakfast one day as he pours Aziraphale yet another cup of tea. 

It is not an unwarranted query. Aziraphale has barely touched his food, and his hands fidgeting nervously with the napkin in his lap, eyes darting around the room as if he expects to see a ghost suddenly appear in the doorways. The fight with Crowley has worked itself so deeply into his mind and his heart that it has begun to verge upon obsession. He finds himself running through those final moments over and over again, wondering what might have been done differently, what he might have missed, what divine law he ought to have invoked in order to avoid handing over the dreadful thing. There are a hundred possible scenarios spun in fiction, but only one truth, and worst of all, he only has his side of the truth. 

His insight into Crowley is woefully limited. As much as he likes his friends, there is no forgetting that the old fellow is a demon, and as an angel, Aziraphale simply cannot insert himself into a demon’s manner of thinking thoroughly enough to gauge how Crowley might be feeling or what intentions he might be carrying. There is an impenetrable barrier between them, as there has always been. 

They are two beings born of the same maker who walked incredibly different paths, and in this moment more than any other, it is an insurmountable obstacle. 

“Yes, actually,” Aziraphale says, eyes glancing up towards the boy before falling away again. “I had a fight with a friend, a long time ago, and I keep finding myself stuck in it.”

“Had a fight with my girl once —” the crew member says as he finishes his pour “— and she told me that sometimes I need to just tell her that she’s right, even if she isn’t. Milk?”

“Please,” Aziraphale replies. 

The stream of white coils and snakes in his cup, and he looks away from it again. 

There is a sigh and a glimmer of sadness in the lines at the corners of his eyes as Aziraphale considers the boy’s tale. “But are certain behaviors that ought to be unforgivable.”

A shrug ripples across the boy’s shoulders. “I don’t know. If you like someone, you like someone. You have to give them room to make mistakes sometimes. ‘Specially if you want them to forgive yours. My girl’s got her faults, but I do, too.”

Aziraphale nods, and the boy moves onto his next table. 

The tea grows cold before the angel remembers to drink it, and it takes a small miracle to warm it again. 

* * *

Crowley was sincerely thankful to set foot on dry land again, though to whom his thanks should be directed was nebulous at best. If his pattern so far held, it would be another eight or nine years before the next time he got himself into a funk thinking about Aziraphale; in the meantime he had Things To Do. He had an assignment, and there was sure to be plenty of incidental mischief to cause.17

He decided to pencil in 1962 to go winkle the angel out of his burrow and see if he couldn’t patch things up. Even Aziraphale had a hard time holding a grudge for over a century. Crowley slung his knapsack over his shoulder, tilted his hat at a more rakish angle, and set off.

* * *

The trip is almost over by the time Aziraphale pulls the blanket off of that mirror and sees himself properly reflected in the polished surface that lies between the twisting serpent. He regards himself for only a moment before his gaze roams towards the single, jeweled eye of the snake that has stood watch over him for the majority of this journey. For a moment, he thinks that he sees a gleam of life lurking within it, but he dismisses the notion as a mere flight of fancy. 

All the same, he gathers himself with a great, heaving breath and practices the dreaded words — addressing the snake in particular as he says, “I’m terribly sorry, Crowley.” 

It doesn’t fix anything. 

It doesn’t undo what has been done. 

It doesn’t make suicide pills any less effective. 

It doesn’t negate Crowley’s crimes. 

It does, however, make him feel a tiny bit more at peace, and when he finally disembarks the ship, his steps are a bit lighter and his smile a bit less tainted by strife and grief and loss. 

Perhaps he will run into Crowley one of these days in a shop or a park or on a street corner, and maybe they will be able to forgive this terrible weight that has hung over them since that fateful day in the park. 

One can only hope.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Did humans call it the Big Apple yet? He thought not; his inner monologue had never been especially noted for temporal consistency.back
> 
> 2 In the metaphorical sense. _Real_ evil smelled not at all like anything on Earth.back
> 
> 3 A blessed folding cot, was what it was, and not even a mattress provided. Crowley theoretically approved of significant wealth disparities in that the resentment they provoked made his job easier, but he did not care for them when applied to _him_. Besides, they grated on his sense of fairness, and had since _well_ before that bizarre conversation about how deprivation supposedly made one more virtuous. Speaking of self-righteousness, arrogance, and condescension.back
> 
> 4 Well, alright, the first millennium or so they hadn’t been _friends_ friends. But neither of them had tried to kill the other on the wall in Eden, and for an angel and a demon Crowley thought that sodding well counted.back
> 
> 5 A bit of a slippery concept, given that doors he expected to open for him generally did.back
> 
> 6 Or lower-downs, in Crowley’s case.back
> 
> 7 “But _you_ are _Fallen_ ,” Crowley muttered mockingly to himself as he stared over the rail at the reflection of the moon in the water.back
> 
> 8 He _cared_ only when someone who might tell Beelzebub happened to be around, which was rarely.back
> 
> 9 You couldn’t really call A.Z. Fell & Co. a bookshop. It wasn’t even a library, since Aziraphale was no happier about lending a book than selling one. It was more like a book _museum_.back
> 
> 10 He was still a little upset over _Romeo and Juliet_. Yes, when you were friends with an author you sometimes ended up in the work, but that play had been a bit much. Fortunately Aziraphale didn’t seem to have twigged...not that it mattered now.back
> 
> 11 Even if they were inclined to give him a hearing for the look of the thing, he knew perfectly well that they’d never, ever believe that his repentance was sincere—quite rightly, since the only reason he’d ever even try would be to save his own arse and that wasn’t real repentance.back
> 
> 12 See above under ‘repentance’.back
> 
> 13 Crowley had never really thought about _why_ he just assumed the angel would live through the Last Battle. You can't reason your way to a conclusion that contradicts one of the axioms of your reasoning process.back
> 
> 14 Maybe not, these days, the arrogant prat. After all you didn’t get wistful about someone you’d merely been _fraternising_ with, did you?back
> 
> 15 Yes, even now.back
> 
> 16 That is to say, the one that would hurt the most.back
> 
> 17 And even more to notice in passing and take credit for.back


End file.
